Thursday, August 26, 2010

Campaign finance data suggests that council at-large challenger Hans Riemer may have received a small bump in campaign contributions in the immediate aftermath of our report on the incumbents’ non-aggression pact.Consider the number and amounts of Riemer’s contributions over the last three weeks of the Pre-Primary 1 reporting period.

During the week of 7/20-7/26, Riemer received 29 contributions worth $6,555. During the week of 7/27-8/2, Riemer received 24 contributions worth $5,565. For the two weeks together, Riemer raised an average $866 per day, which is a healthy clip for any candidate.

On 8/3, we reported that the four at-large incumbents had struck an agreement to not target each other. That same day, Riemer received 20 contributions worth $2,720. On the following two days, 27 more contributions came in worth $6,135. For the week as a whole, Riemer raised 77 contributions accounting for $15,040. That’s a pace of $2,149 per day, or 148% more than his prior two-week average. (We excluded 8/10, the last day of the filing period, from these calculations because nearly all candidates sent out last-minute appeals on that day.)

Was Riemer’s fundraising spike caused by the incumbents’ deal? It’s impossible to know for sure, but the data is consistent with the many complaints we have heard over the incumbents’ midnight-hour reconciliation. Sentiments such as these can only be helpful to Hans Riemer.

Update: MPW commenter Mike Raia notes that Riemer sent a fundraising email on August 3. We have also learned that Riemer sent a fundraising email on July 21 and, according to the above statistics, it did not generate the same yield as the the one on August 3.